Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Living in The Future. That’s The Whole Problem.
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At a staff meeting last month, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly unveiled the newly updated Company Values for The Company Formerly Known As Facebook.
You can read all about the values for yourself here, along with “what it’s like working at Meta and what makes us different from other companies.” TL;DR:
Move Fast.
Focus on Long-Term Impact.
Build Awesome Things.
Live in the Future.
Be Direct and Respect Your Colleagues.
Meta, Metamates, Me.
Some of this is laughable on its face — Metamates? Seriously now? — but a lot of it can be fully understood only in the context of the stated values this new set replaces — and what it keeps.
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When you read Zuckerberg’s New Values in the context of what’s occurred in the 10 years since he last updated them, it becomes clear that this statement is a kind of self-satisfied brag that he no longer has to worry about any present rival to his future power — he can afford to think long-term, with no one able to stop him in the here and now.
Zuckerberg says that he last wrote Facebook’s Company Values in 2007 — but the earliest publicly shared version of it I can find dates back from 2012, with his letter to potential investors after Facebook first went public. Here are those values:
Focus On Impact.
Move Fast.
Be Bold.
Be Open.
Build Social Value.
There’s only one value that the Mark Zuckerberg of 2022 kept verbatim from the Mark Zuckerberg of 2012, and in fact moved even higher on the list: Move Fast.
As in, the shortened version of Facebook’s infamous internal slogan that has led to so many lives lost and so much civic harm: Move Fast And Break…
